Casting Call:

Casting calls list

Film School

Details

Union:

Union or Non union

Area of media:

Film School

Network:

Paid?:

Yes

Rates:

An honorarium of $150.00 will be provided. Open to Union and Non-Union performers.

Deadline:

Nov 8, 2022

Shooting starts:

Outside dates November 28th - December 1st.

Shooting finishes:

In person table read - Required for 1 day only

Shooting locations:

In person table read at the Canadian Film Centre

Cities for response:

Toronto

Comments

We are committed to diverse, inclusive casting. For every role, please submit qualified performers, without regard to disability, race, age, color, national origin, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other basis prohibited by law.

Offers only, no auditions. This in person table read will be held at the Canadian Film Centre. Each actor will be required for the hours above for 1 day only and may read more than 1 role. We are looking for actors who are also able to provide feedback on the script post read-through in a discussion forum with the writer. Total time commitment is 3 hours.

Actors must double vaxxed and cannot have travelled outside of Canada 7 days prior to the reads and must be symptom free. Actors will be required to rapid test in advance.

WRITER BIO: JUSTIN NEAL is a dramatic writer of offbeat narratives that weave comedy with high-stakes drama, creating uplifting tales of personal transformation. Neal’s screenplay The Skins Game was optioned by Curiosity Pictures and Really Real Films and is currently in development. Neal’s limited series project Boundary Bay and his feature The Traveller have been awarded development grants from the Indigenous Screen Office and Creative BC. His play, So Damn Proud, premiered in Vancouver in September 2021 to multiple sold out performances. For years, Neal juggled a career in marketing and magazine production in San Francisco and New York while he acted and wrote at night. He moved to his family’s traditional Squamish territory in Vancouver to earn a Joint MFA in Creative Writing and Theatre from UBC in 2015. Neal was selected as a resident of the 2022 Norman Jewison Film Program Writers’ Lab at the Canadian Film Centre.

Storyline

Joe travels to Sydney, Australia, to escape the tragedy he caused back home. But his drunken misery takes a swift pause upon meeting Alice behind the bar. Joe quickly learns that Alice is more than a bartender. She is also a key part of an elaborate identity theft scheme. A revelation that comes to Joe as he regains consciousness after being drugged, and as Alice rams a gun into her former crime partner’s face. Together they flee to Alice’s desolate Aboriginal homeland and her father’s small remote village.

Content Warnings: - Character has suicidal ideations that are not graphically expressed in the work - Addiction issues - One character espouses anti-woman, anti-trans, and racist ideology - Violence, including threats with guns - Graphic and foul language

Roles

Role type	Role	Gender & Age range
Lead	JOE	Male 23 - 29 Years old
Description Male, 23-29, Indigenous descent. Joe is in a deep depression for a tragedy he caused back home. He’s decides to travel as far away from his family as possible, to the opposite side of the world, to drink himself to death. But his suicidal ideations are more theoretical as he is similarly drawn to party. Joe stumbles upon the Thirsty Palms bar, drawn in by the waitress behind the bar, Alice. He is then heavily dosed by Billy with ketamine. Joe then finds himself on the run with Alice. He must choose to go his own way and fend for himself or continue with a woman he finds alternately infatuating and infuriating.
Role type	Role	Gender & Age range
Lead	ALICE	Female 25 - 29 Years old
Description Female, 25-29, Indigenous descent (ability to do an Australian accent a plus but not required).. She is cool, calm and collected, unless provoked, then she’ll attack with ferocity. She has a cutting and dry wit. After the suicide of her mother, Alice felt suffocated at home in Queensland and made her way to the big city. She was attracted by the fast money and loyal fellowship of the criminal life. But Alice’s guilty conscience and lingering worries with her father’s health back home have caught up to her. She chooses the straight and narrow, quitting the identity theft scheme. The problem is, her arch-nemesis, Billy, won’t let her leave. Because of this, Alice drugs and kidnaps Billy then releases him in the Blue Mountains. She convinces Joe, the hapless would-be victim, to go on the run with her because he’s become a target. Alice’s return to her Indigenous homeland to her father David’s remote village rips open festering wounds with her half-sister, Marnie.
Role type	Role	Gender & Age range
Lead	STEVIE	All 23 - 35 Years old
Description Transgender female (or gender nonconforming), 25-35, Indigenous descent (ability to do an Australian accent a plus but not required). A quick-witted survivor they suffer from anxiety. Stevie looks to Alice as a protector but Stevie is freaked out that Alice has actually gone through with drugging THE TRAVELLER — Character Breakdown Billy. This forces Stevie to go to bat for Alice in a major way within the crime family that Stevie is born into. They do their best to remain calm in some harried and stressful situations, oscillating between being scared, angry, and empowered. WILL ALSO BE READING THE ROLE OF FEMALE PATRON - A budding organized crime fetishist.
Role type	Role	Gender & Age range
Lead	BILLY	Male 30 - 45 Years old
Description Male 30-45, white. A short hard firecracker wears tight fitting t-shirts and jeans to show off their physique. A British (or European) ex-pat who came to the land perfectly suited to his vocation — Billy was a criminal the moment he came out of the womb. Foul mouthed, bad tempered, and extremely cunning, Billy is happy to push any situation to the breaking point, exploit any weakness he can detect. He uses his gifts of intellectual prowess solely for ill-gotten gains. A sadistic fuck, he thrives on causing carnage and pain. His greatest weakness is the level of irrationality that clouds his decision making when he’s been double-crossed. Alice knows and leverages this. WILL ALSO BE READING THE ROLE OF TONY - Male, 60s. The Thirsty Palms owner, Tony took over the local organized crime business at a young age with his uncompromising grit and hunger for power. Through the years he’s created a well oiled machine that generates vast sums of money choosing well planned grifts and heists to augment his drug dealing enterprises. He’s taken though, with Billy’s risky but high reward ventures... until Alice smacks some sense into Tony to quit while he’s ahead. Tony now sees the inevitable doom if they continue their identity theft scheme.
Role type	Role	Gender & Age range
Lead	David	Male 60 - 69 Years old
Description Male 60s,Indigenous descent (Open Ethnicity: it is preferred to cast this role with a person of Indigenous descent, but given the writer's hope to hear this character read as written, a strong preference will be given to a person with a proficient Australian accent regardless of ethnicity.). After contracting a rare disease, Alice’s dad has paraplegia. A revered elder and keeper of Indigenous knowledge in his community, he’s always had a tight bond with Alice. David fully supports her wanderlust. He trusts her, and though David’s ignorance may be bliss in regards to the inner workings of what Alice is up to, his love is forever unconditional. He is overjoyed by her return home. A recovering alcoholic, he intuits quickly that Joe could use some of his guidance. But he never pushes. WILL ALSO BE READING THE ROLES OF BOB - male 40s, Aboriginal Australian. With a hefty beard and bits of gray, and a roughened face matching his well worn black leather jacket, Bob is cousins with Alice. They grew up wreaking havoc across north central Australia. Though he doesn’t get to see his cousin often, when she calls out for help, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do. Joe Sr. - 50s, white. Joe’s father and drinking buddy. The two were thick as thieves. Joe’s drunk driving accident killed his father, a tragedy that shakes his family’s world to the core.
Role type	Role	Gender & Age range
Lead	MARNIE	Female 30 - 39 Years old
Description Female 30s, white (A strong preference will be given to an actor with a proficient Australian accent regardless of ethnicity). She shares the same mother as Alice. Their mom committed suicide, and the two have not gotten along since. They both blame the other for that tragedy. Marnie is also an in-home nurse to David. And while Alice, the good daughter, sends plenty of cash to Marnie to help with David’s care, their splintered relationship has only gotten more testy through the years. It reaches a boiling point as Marnie, the long resentful half-sister, can’t stand the idea of Alice just waltzing in like some kind of hero that David adores. WILL ALSO BE READING THE ROLE OF JOANNE - Female, 18-20 mixed race with Indigenous descent. Joe’s sister. A contemporary and modern dance prodigy. Fierce and intense after the death of her dad, if Joanne had a gun she might very well shoot Joe.
Role type	Role	Gender & Age range
Lead	NARRATOR	All 30 - 50 Years old
Description Any Gender, 30-50, Open ethnicity. Must be an excellent cold reader, able to keep the pace and subtly convey tone. WILL ALSO BE READING THE ROLE OF TRAIN VOICE - A syrupy sweet Australian voice; an unfortunate idea of the railway company’s marketing department, their saccharine announcements elicit bloodshed.
Role type	Role	Gender & Age range
Principal	ANDRES	Male 30 - 39 Years old
Description Male, 30s, Open ethnicity. He loves showing off his money with chic designer clothes. He is Billy’s dutiful apprentice even though he lacks a predilection for violence like his mentor. He’s fully into playing the role of the fresh faced trustworthy character that disarms targets and makes them Billy’s victims. WILL ALSO BE READING THE ROLES OF ROHAN - Male, 60s. A lovable and quirky elderly South Asian man, Rohan is the owner of a pawn shop in a medium sized town. He grew up within the business and then inherited it from his parents, a fixture in their town for decades. Rohan has a penchant for soap operas and an endless fascination with the phenomena of popular culture. Male Patron - An organized crime fetishist who brings a friend to the Thirsty Palms bar to observe the animals.

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